No - I don’t agree that they’re completely different.

“Made by AI” would be completely different.

“Made with AI” actually means pretty much the exact same thing as “AI was used in this image” - it’s just that the former lays it out baldly and the latter softens the impact by using indirect language.

I can certainly see how “photographers” who use AI in their images would tend to prefer the latter, but bluntly, fuck 'em. If they can’t handle the shame of the fact that they did so they should stop doing it - get up off their asses and invest some time and effort into doing it all themselves. And if they can’t manage that, they should stop pretending to be artists.

In a somewhat metaphorical but nonetheless very real sense - most politics is effectively snake oil.

There’s a set of people who exhibit a particular combination of mental illness and natural charisma, such that they feel an irrational urge to impose their wills on others, a lack of the necessary empathy to recognize the harm they do and the personal appeal necessary to convince others to let them do it.

There’s another set of people who feel an irrational sense of helplessness - who want to turn control of their lives and their decisions over to others, so they can just go along with a preordained set of values and beliefs and choices rather expending effort on, and taking the risk of, making their own.

And just as in any more standard “snake oil” dynamic, the first group, exclusively for its own benefit, preys upon the weakness and hope of the second. Just as in any other such dynamic, the people of the first group make promises they have no intention of keeping ultimately just so that they can benefit, and the people of the second group continue, irratiomally, to believe those promises, even as all of the available evidence demonstrates that the promises are empty.

Candidates for public office should be required to undergo a mental health assessment as part of the process of getting on the ballot, and those who score beyond (above or below, as may be relevant) particular thresholds are barred from seeking office.

I sincerely believe that there’s no single thing we could do that would provide more benefit to the world than to get sociopaths and narcissists and megalomaniacs out of positions of power. Each and every one of the most notable and contentious politicians in the world today is, if you just take a step back and look at them honestly, blatantly profoundly mentally ill. Enough is enough.

In all seriousness, I sort of pity conservatives.

They’re sort of like the one kid in kindergarten who could never manage to figure out which plastic peg went in which hole and would just get frustrated and throw things. Except that they never grew out of it. Here they are, twenty or thirty or sixty years later, still unable to grasp the simple fact that the world just is what it is and the round peg isn’t going to go in the square hole no matter how much you pound on it, and still angry over it, as if it’s some sort of vast conspiracy rather than just the fact that they’re fucking morons.

That has to be an unpleasant way to live.

Of course, they’re such vile and loathsome and destructive assholes that my pity is short-lived, but still…

Just another step toward making used-to-be-Twitter a safe space for cowardly fascists.

“People’s Army” = the violent thugs in the employ of the new state, to replace the violent thugs in the employ of the old one.

“Support of the Proletariat” = the alternating oppression and indoctrination of the people will continue, under new management.

And all in support of:

“Vanguard Party” = the new ruling class.

This is what an utter lack of integrity, ethics, scruples and reason looks like.

Israel has been trying to provoke Lebanon into a war for decades now. They’re not going to stop.

That’s no surprise, and entirely irrelevant.

The US political system is broken. It doesn’t legislate according to what is thought to be best for the country or its people - it legislates according to what will bring the most money from wealthy individuals, corporations and interest groups.

Fossil fuel corporations and industry groups have very deep pockets and have well-established channels by which to funnel that money into the hands of politicians, party officials, and assorted powermongers, so the government is going to generally legislate in their favor, entirely regardless of any other considerations.

That Was the Day by The The

I would presume it’s not paid yet (though the CEO certainly is). That phase of the operation comes later.

For the moment, they’re working to solidify as much control as possible of as much of the fediverse as possible, which control will allow them to gatekeep it, monetize it, extract rent from it and inevitably enshittify it. That, so it’s hoped, will be the phase during which their investment now will pay off.

So… by my count, the board of directors actually outnumber the employees.

At a “non-profit” (until that was revoked) company that gets most of its funding through Patreon.

Years from now (and at this rate, not very many of them), when people wonder how it was that such a promising venture that championed decentralization turned into just another enshittified megacorporation squatting over a piece of internet real estate and extracting rent to pay obscene salaries to a handful of executives - this is how. We’re watching as the foundation is being laid, right now.

England’s already the snooping capital of the west, isn’t it?

It seems that every time a new privacy-invading technology comes floating down the pike, England just instantly adopts it. They don’t even hesitate -it’s like, “Ooh… new survellance technology? I’ll take that one and that one and that one and… you know what? Just give me the lot!”

And every time, I cynically reflect on the fact that Orwell was English.

Is there still anyone in your office from the old RipplingRiver days on IMDb?

A cynically unsurprising article.

When you’re determined to condemn someone who has the moral high ground, guilt by association is the most effective fallacy.

Imagine Israel, of all countries, crying to the UN, of all organizations, about a purported “flagrant violation of narional sovereignty, international law and Security Council resolutions.”

I laughed out loud when I read that. As if that isn’t exactly what Israel does virtually on a daily basis, and has done for decades now, and while thumbing their nose at the UN the entire time.